improved our research output. It permits a wider net to he cast, allowing e-surveys to be conducted from a physician's home computer, and compilation, quantification, and analysis to he completed on a strategic planner's laptop. In short, we can know more about a wider array of customers than ever before, and this can be accomplished more efficiently and economically. From this data, we populate our creative hrief for G e rd a to n with the most up-to-date thinking available to help guide the creative process. 2. Gathering the Marketing Team—Managing the Start-up Meeting Even the process of calling a meeting has changed. There's no more calling team members on the phone to inform them of a meeting, or even walking over personally to let them know. Now, we send a digital meeting invitation that holds the time and date open, and each invitee either accepts or declines. At the same time, we place a hold on a meeting room. MeetingMaker is one of a number of software programs that can be used in this way. Each member of the team will receive a copy of the G e rd a to n creative brief and come prepared to discuss it in detail. Once a consensus is reached as to its validity, the creative brief becomes the touchstone for everything else that the creatives need to do to complete their assignment. The team then moves to perhaps the most critical agenda item: deadlines. At the close of the meeting, the G e rd a to n creative team is given two weeks to finish its work. As will be seen later, the time that it takes to research, write, lay out, present, and produce this sales aid has been dramatically reduced by the introduction of computers into everyday agency life. However, the time saved does not mean that writers have more time to find
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